Two days of activities and workshops will inspire a whole new generation of people to pick up Manx Gaelic and use it in their everyday life.

That is the idea behind a Manx language festival which is to be re-launched next weekend.

The ’Cooish’ will be held over Friday 20 and Saturday 21 October in Peel and St John’s, and will hold workshops and classes for those wanting to find out more about speaking Manx, and to improve what skills they may already have in communicating in Manx.

On Friday night, at the Peel Masonic Hall, there is to be a concert and a launch of a new Manx book, ’The First 1000 words in Manx, which is a re-launch of an existing title.

Saturday will see four different workshops, focused on encouraging the use of Manx in different walks of life.

There will be courses held to discuss translating writing into Manx, a workshop with guidance on how to compose original music in Gaelic and pointers for parents who would like to learn Manx along with their children.

’The Cooish started many years ago,’ said Adrian. ’It featured an number of activities over a week, with the aim of promote the language, and to get it out there.

’It stopped for a while, as we were very busy with a number of other things, but we have now decided that, because there are many more people involved in the language scene at the moment, we want to get it going again, re-invigorate it and get it going again in a new direction.

’I will be asking about "expanding the tent", about where we go with the Cooish from here.

’There has been a bit of a gap for a few years, and this is a light re-introduction, a "Cooish veg" almost, with the idea over the next three or four years to expand it and get some more people involved.

’The aim is to raise the profile of the language, to encourage more people find out about the language, to help learners and, help people develop their own skills, either in song writing or translation. ’

Tickets for the Friday evening concert are £5, available from Culture Vannin. All the Saturday workshops are free to enter and take part in, and people can register for them through culturevannin.im